12th Night Festival: Bach at One
The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity Baroque Orchestra perform the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach each week as part of “Bach at One.” A devout Lutheran, Bach composed 200 cantatas using both sacred and secular texts. Many of those cantatas are heard in churches around the world every Sunday, but through Bach at One, your lunch hour can be enriched by these timeless works. The New York Times has praised the “dramatic vigor” of Bach performances by Trinity artists, not to mention “the buoyant, elegantly shaped orchestral sound” and “the lithe, immaculate and colorful singing of the chorus.”
In the spring of 2016, Trinity’s ever-popular Bach at One series will complete the first presentation of Bach’s entire monumental output of sacred vocal music.
This week, as part of Trinity's Twelfth Night Festival:
Georg Muffat: Passacaglia
BWV 115, Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit
BWV 205, Zerreißet, zersprenget, zertrümmert die Gruft
The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity Baroque Orchestra; Julian Wachner, conductor
Boasting an "engrossing" and "enviable variety of repertory" (The New York Times), Trinity Wall Street's Twelfth Night Festival returns in 2015-16 to celebrate the twelve days of the nativity with a full program of mostly free events—at St. Paul's Chapel and Trinity Church—from December 26 through January 6. As Trinity has become an epicenter for both early and new music, this year's festival, aptly subtitled "Time's Arrow," recovers the past as composers reach for the musical unknown. The juxtaposition of music spanning the past millennium—from Handel's Messiah and Bach cantatas to the premieres of works by Daniel Felsenfeld and David Lang—is sure to have a lasting impact on returning and new concertgoers alike.